Note to Charles: You might want to update your side bar links with Phil’s new location.

Unless you’ve buried your head in the sand—which, to be honest, would be a better use of your time—you’ve heard the world is coming to an end this Friday, Dec. 21, 2012.

OK, for those of you who are impatient and want to cut to the chase, here’s the scoop: No, it isn’t.

If you frequent online bulletin boards, fear-mongering websites, or the History Channel, you might think otherwise: It’s hard to avoid people screaming about the prophetic Maya calendar predicting global catastrophe.

And if you haven’t heard of it, then I wish I were you. Because I get email, tweets, Facebook messages, and probably smoke signals about it all the time, and have been for years. It turns out that a lot of people are concerned about these claims, despite zero evidence for them. Still, it’s worth taking a look at them, if only to assuage some fears.

Here’s the deal: According to the doomsday prophecy, the ancient Maya predicted the end of the world would occur on Dec. 21, 2012. We know this because that’s the date their calendar ends. While they weren’t specific about how Armageddon was to come about, there are a host of astronomical events that can and/or will occur that can reduce the Earth to a burned-out cinder.